What Were We Thinking?
Following management ideas downstream, upstream—and occasionally back again As a consultant, I spent much of my career downstream. Global organizations had often already decided what they wanted to do. A leadership model was being rolled out. A competency framework...
Current Thinking
Measuring Organization Development Change Impact: A Discussion and Model for Planned Organization Development
David Tensen & Wayne Graham · Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal · 2026 Why I’m reading this: Add the client’s “Why I’m reading this” commentary here. Read the original article →
Purpose Not Prediction: The Role of Managers in the Age of AI
Amir Goldberg & Phanish Puranam · Journal of Organization Design · 2026 Why I’m reading this: I’m less interested in predictions about whether AI will replace managers than in what the question reveals about management itself. If prediction, analysis and...
What Slime Mold Taught Me About Management Ideas
How Provisional Knowledge Hardens into Organisational Truth A publication draft in the series The Work Management Ideas Do This is not really an article about slime mold. It is about what happens when an interesting observation acquires enough authority to reorganise...
The Future of Leadership Development
Leadership development is evolving rapidly as technology, changing workplace expectations, and new ways of working reshape how leaders grow. The future will focus on adaptability, emotional intelligence, personalized coaching, and continuous learning to help leaders...
Orientation
This site explores the ideas, systems and assumptions that shape how people lead, learn and organize.
It brings together current inquiries, conversations and practical work in organization development, leadership and human systems—particularly where management rhetoric and organization development reality diverge.
My work takes three forms: building systems, developing ideas and helping people navigate complexity.
How I Help.
Building Systems
I help organizations design capabilities, systems and learning experiences that strengthen leadership and drive meaningful change.
Developing Ideas
I partner with leaders to shape ideas, develop strategic content, and generate perspectives that build credibility and spark important conversations.
Navigating Complexity
I work with leaders and founders to navigate complex transitions and make decisions that align purpose with performance.
Representative Engagements
State Street, Japan
Applied research examined why substantial talent investment was not translating into the advancement of Japanese women. The findings informed targeted leadership-development interventions and broader talent practices designed to strengthen readiness for senior roles.
CMIC Group
As CMIC expanded internationally, a leadership-development architecture was created to help successful domestic leaders build the capabilities required to lead across cultures, functions, and geographies.
Infineon Technologies Japan K.K.
A comprehensive organizational assessment informed an integrated talent-development architecture connecting future business requirements with leadership capability, development experiences, and succession priorities.
Intel
The service-delivery model supporting Intel’s international assignments was redesigned to handle increasing volume while maintaining quality, reducing administrative complexity, and clarifying responsibilities.
Red Bull Japan
Leadership-development work supported leaders managing increasingly complex events, partnerships, and growth initiatives while balancing Red Bull’s distinctive global model with the realities of the Japanese market.
Senior Military Healthcare Leader
A structured advisory process helped an accomplished military healthcare leader explore career alternatives, educational pathways, and opportunities for continued contribution while preparing for a major professional transition.
University of Tsukuba
Leadership, organizational behavior, and management-development content was designed and taught to help international MBA students connect management ideas with the realities of leading in organizations.
Temple University, Japan Campus
Organization-development workshops translated leadership, coaching, and change concepts into practical approaches for internationally diverse participants working across cultural and organizational boundaries.
Experience & Perspective
Leslie Taylor
Much of my career has unfolded in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific region during periods of globalization, financial crisis, international expansion, technological change and shifting approaches to leadership development.
I have worked inside and alongside multinational organizations, consulting firms, entrepreneurial ventures and educational settings—designing leadership and organization development initiatives, advising people through periods of transition, and building coaching, talent and learning capability.
That experience has made me less interested in universal formulas than in how ideas work in context: what organizations actually reward, how people develop judgment and capability, and why intended change so often produces unintended consequences. Alongside my client work, I have taught in international MBA programs and pursued applied research across Western and Asian settings.
20+ Years
Designing and delivering leadership, talent and organization-development initiatives
Fortune 500 to Founders
Working with global corporations, professional firms and entrepreneurial ventures
7 Sectors
Experience across varied industries, organization development cultures and operating environments
From Diagnosis to Delivery
Research, assessment, program design, facilitation, coaching and evaluation
Thinkers Who Have Influenced My Work
These thinkers have influenced my work through their published ideas. Their inclusion does not imply affiliation or endorsement.
Donald Clark
Question
How do new technologies change professional learning?
Clark continually examines the assumptions behind learning technology rather than simply reporting new developments. His work encourages practitioners to ask what effective learning actually requires before deciding whether technology improves it.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- A Pattern Language
- The Timeless Way of Building
Follow / Explore
PatternLanguage.com
Ikujiro Nonaka
Question
How does experience become organizational capability?
I increasingly return to Nonaka’s work to think about organizational memory, AI and capability development.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- The Knowledge-Creating Company
- The Wise Company
Follow / Explore
Selected SECI papers
Deirdre McCloskey
Question
How does experience become organizational capability?
I increasingly return to Nonaka’s work to think about organizational memory, AI and capability development.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- The Knowledge-Creating Company
- The Wise Company
Follow / Explore
Selected SECI papers
Christopher Alexander
Question
Why do some systems feel alive while others become brittle?
Alexander’s work on patterns and emergence continues to influence how I think about organizations and learning systems.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- A Pattern Language
- The Timeless Way of Building
Follow / Explore
PatternLanguage.com
Ethan Mollick
Question
How should professionals work alongside AI?
Mollick explores how AI changes professional work while preserving human judgment and expertise.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- Co-Intelligence
Follow / Explore
One Useful Thing (Substack)
Jeffrey Pfeffer
Question
What if accepted management wisdom is wrong?
Pfeffer consistently challenges fashionable management ideas by asking what the evidence actually supports.
Where I’d Begin
Read
- Leadership BS
- The Knowing-Doing Gap
Follow / Explore
Stanford GSB Faculty Page
Resources
Ideas, questions and practical material worth keeping close at hand.
QUESTIONS
Before You Choose an Intervention
Five prompts for slowing down premature solutions.
CONCEPTS & TOOLS
Ideas for Practice
Established concepts, models and tools that help us understand organizations and work.
FIELD NOTES
From the Field
Brief puzzles and observations from organization development practice.